When it comes to the top two U.S.-based major automakers, it’s difficult to discern which of the two longtime Chair/CEOs has demonstrated more failure in leadership and financial performance: Jim Farley at Ford, or Mary Barra at General Motors.
Among their many woke priorities during their respective tenures are both executives’ aggressive development of electric vehicle models across the entirety of their offerings. Because of Farley’s and Barra’s decisions to capitulate to former President Biden‘s Green New Deal agenda, which was attractive thanks to a multitude of tax credit and subsidy sweeteners for EVs, the pair emphasized political favoritism over consumer demand for their product lines.
With President Trump and Congress largely killing most of the incentives for renewable energy schemes earlier this year, in addition to the administration’s tariffs policy, the already declining sales of EVs are now on death watch.
Literally every week we could point out Ford’s or GM’s miscalculations, especially when it comes to EVs. This week we’ll highlight Barra’s, due to this development reported by Reuters:
GM will stop production of two electric Cadillac SUVs at its assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, during the month of December, according to a person familiar with the matter and communications to GM employees viewed by Reuters…
GM also plans to significantly curtail production of those vehicles during the first five months of next year by temporarily laying off one of its two shifts of workers, according to the sources. The company will additionally shutter the plants for one week in October and November.
The automaker is also planning to indefinitely delay the start of a second shift at an assembly plant near Kansas City, which is still slated to begin production of the Chevy Bolt EV later this year, the person familiar with the matter said.
Asked for comment, the company told Reuters: “General Motors is making strategic production adjustments in alignment with expected slower EV industry growth and customer demand by leveraging our flexible ICE (internal combustion engine) and EV manufacturing footprint.”
The Trump administration’s tax and spending law passed in July withdrew key support for EVs, including a $7,500 consumer tax credit that had been in place for about 15 years. Car executives have said they expect a rough patch for EV sales after that subsidy expires Sept. 30.
“The $7,500 tax credit is driving demand; without that, that’ll slow,” GM CEO Mary Barra said at an event in December 2024…
EV sales have failed to meet bullish forecasts carmakers put forth just a few years ago, and most companies continue to lose money on them. Green-car backers say federal support is needed to broaden adoption and prevent the U.S. from falling further behind China — the world’s EV leader — and Europe.
Last year at GM’s annual meeting, NLPC’s Luke Perlot presented a shareholder proposal that called for the elimination of emissions reduction goals from the calculations for top executives’ pay formulas. Barra and her top lieutenants should not be incentivized to develop vehicles that are only economical for consumers if taxpayers massively subsidize them, which masks their true costs.
As for the argument that the U.S. is “falling behind China” — there is absolutely nothing wrong with that if EVs are not a product that Americans want to buy. “Falling behind” communists who want to engineer their economies to enrich their state-owned corporations and their CCP leaders is nothing to be ashamed of.
Speaking of China, NLPC also sponsored a “Communist China Risk Audit” proposal at GM’s annual meeting in 2023. The resolution sought greater transparency from the company about the difficulties and tripwires related to its business in the country. In December the company announced it would “incur more than $5 billion in impairment charges and write-downs in the fourth quarter because of weakness in its China business,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Barra became CEO in January 2014 and added the Board Chair title in January 2016. During her ten-or-so years in the top role(s), she has done nothing to elevate GM in terms of performance or distinction. And inexplicably her time leading the automaker has overlapped with her concurrent service on the Board of Directors at Disney, where shareholders have suffered an equally dismal decade.
Too many CEOs in Corporate America — like Disney’s Bob Iger, Comcast‘s Brian Roberts, and PepsiCo‘s Ramon Laguarta — are allowed to languish in their roles, collect rewards for prioritizing ESG and DEI, and keep their elite statuses as they socialize with each other at things like the Business Roundtable, the World Economic Forum, and the billionaires’ retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho every summer. Private jet travel and fully-armed personal security for all at no cost to them individually.
How dare shareholders sniff around at their China decisions, their DEI virtue-signaling, and their EV fantasies. They need to know their proper place and leave these execs and their clubby, incestuous corporate boards alone.
